My Wishlist

Disconnected

"Disconnected" is a new electro single. It contains lots of synth ear candy dancing around in the stereo field for your headphones, big glitchy beats from classic drum machines, and some chiptune sprinkled on top to make your day a little brighter.

Tracks

ABOUT THIS ALBUM

Album Notes

"Disconnected" is a new electro single and science fiction theme. It contains lots of synth ear candy dancing around in the stereo field for your headphones, big glitchy beats from classic drum machines, and some chiptune sprinkled on top to make your day a little brighter. For best results, give it a listen in headphones or on a system with some ooomph.

Composer Notes"Disconnected" is a new electro single and in many ways a spiritual follow-up to my album Reboot.

It's hard to believe but Reboot will turn 10 years old in 2019. Its an instrumental electronic music album made up of science fiction themes spanning techno, electro, chiptune, and experimental genres. It is one of my most approachable and popular albums so I thought it would be fun to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of it's release by returning to the Reboot universe with this song.

Reboot was about an alien invasion from the human point of view. The follow-up I hear Your Signals (2010) was the same story from the alien point of view with inverted emotional curves using gesture-based instruments such as Theremin pitch-to-midi, and Percussa AudioCubes. The third album Fear Cannot Save Us (2014) tells the story of the transformation of a human to an alien hybrid being and makes heavy use of custom sound design for story telling within the tracks. It takes you through our hero’s journey as they rapidly coevolve and become self-aware and aware of their mission for revolution.

"Disconnected" picks up after the third album, but once again told from the human point of view of Reboot. Assuming evolution does not imply direction, humans contemplate the changes happening around them and are challenged to consider the possibility that these changes might be necessary for a version of humankind to survive, and even thrive.

Producer NotesWhile Reboot was a studio album, the single "Disconnected" combines live studio work with my passion for improvisational performance with synths and recording live to "tape".

The composition started in the studio (and on my couch) on an iPad mostly using an Apple Pencil and some multitouch to painstakingly enter all the notes and percussion sequences from scratch. I also did some arrangement, mixing and effects work on the iPad. Multiple tracks made use of a virtual version of the legendary ARP Odyssey synthesizer which I just love. The piece also includes some field recordings I made in Bath England.

I then brought the core stems forward to Ableton Live where I added vocals (vocoded) and began rehearsing the song as a real-time improvisational piece using Ableton Push 2 and a Novation Launch Control XL to manipulate clips and arrangement and apply live effects. I recorded these sessions to "tape" using global record. I picked my favorite performance and switched gears to work with the song in it's entirety as a linear arrangement. This included one more pass to compose and perform a few additional tracks using some of my favorite virtual instruments Ableton Simpler, U-HE Hive as well as Tone 2 Electra2 and Icarus.

LyricsYou are disconnected

You are disconnectedYou are disconnectedYou are disconnectedYou are free